In receipt of that acerbic enquiry, Elvi lost colour. ‘Well, maybe not want—’

‘That’s the problem,’ Xan interposed before she could even finish speaking. ‘I don’t want to help her because I believe that those who break the law should be punished—’

‘Yes, but—’ Elvi began afresh, thrown on the back foot because before her mother had been charged with theft she would have agreed with him on that score.

‘There is no saving exception in my book,’ Xan Ziakis sliced in again. ‘I felt more sorry for you growing up with an alcoholic parent than I feel sorry for her.’

Elvi’s hands tightened around the glass cradled between her hands and she forced herself to sip again; she wanted to slap him and shut him up because he wasn’t allowing her to get in a word in her mother’s defence. ‘We don’t need your compassion!’ she heard herself snap back and then she bit her lip hard, knowing she shouldn’t have responded in that tone for there was truth in that old adage about catching more flies with honey than vinegar.

‘But you chose to ask for my compassion,’ Xan reminded her with dogged purpose. ‘And I have to wonder, what’s in it for me?’

‘You have your jade pot back?’ Elvi suggested shakily.

‘But I don’t. It’s police evidence at this moment in time,’ Xan told her gently.

Elvi breathed in deep and slow, battling to think straight while he sat there as cool as a block of untouchable ice, and then she clashed with eyes that flamed over her like a fire and realised that his apparently glacial outlook had given her a mistaken impression of him. For a split second as her chest swelled on that breath, his gaze had dropped revealingly below her chin and she was shaken that he could be quite as predictable as most of the men she met. Her boobs were playing more of a starring role than she was, she thought bitterly.

‘My mother has been punished,’ Elvi argued, taking another tack in her growing desperation. ‘She’s been arrested and that was frightening for her and more than enough to teach most people a hard lesson. She has also lost her job and her good name—’

‘Elvi...’ Xan leant across his desk to interrupt her again.

‘No, don’t cut me off this time!’ Elvi urged impatiently. ‘Tell me why you can’t drop the charges—’

‘I’ve already answered that question,’ Xan reminded her with finality.

Enormous blue eyes fixed on him hopefully. ‘But don’t you think that making a benevolent gesture would make you feel good?’

Xan could not believe how naïve she was and he almost laughed. ‘I don’t have a benevolent bone in my body,’ he admitted without embarrassment. ‘I’m a hard-hitter. That’s who I am.’

‘Well, I didn’t come here to repeat the sob story I already put in my letter,’ Elvi assured him with cringing dignity as she started rising from her seat. ‘So, if that’s your last word—’

‘It’s not. You don’t listen very well, do you?’ Xan shot back at her in exasperation. ‘I asked you what would be in this benevolent gesture for me and I do have an option to offer you—’

Taken aback at the very point where she had felt that she was getting nowhere with him, Elvi sank slowly back into the chair. ‘You...er...do?’ she queried dubiously, her eyes openly bemused by the concept.

‘It’s simple and unscrupulous,’ Xan warned her without hesitation. ‘I want you. Give yourself to me and I will drop the charges.’

Elvi’s lower lip parted company with the upper one as she stared back at him in complete astonishment, not quite willing to believe he had actually said those words to her. Give yourself to me. He meant sex. What else could he mean? I want you. The most enormous sense of shock engulfed her. It wasn’t simply unscrupulous, it was filthy, and she was shattered that he could sit there behind his rule-the-world desk and dare to offer her such an offensive escape clause on her mother’s behalf. What world did he live in? What kind of women was he accustomed to dealing with? It was a horrific suggestion no decent woman would accept.

‘I finally appear to have silenced you,’ Xan remarked with unhidden amusement.

And it was that glint of amusement in his extravagantly handsome face and the energy of it in his accented intonation that set free the tide of rage inside Elvi. She flew upright like a rocket and her hand jerked up and she flung the glass of water over him. ‘How dare you?’ she snapped at him furiously. ‘I’m not a slut!’

Xan shook his dark head, water droplets rolling down his lean, dark, dangerous face. Never had he been attacked in such a way, but it didn’t show because he did not move a single muscle. He gazed broodingly back at her, disturbed by her passionate nature but already wondering how that seeming flaw would play out between his sheets. Obviously he was bored with the identikit mistresses who had met his physical needs for years, but that rational, unemotional approach worked for him, he reminded himself, staving off the risks of more personal entanglements. ‘I didn’t suggest that you were, but there’s a vacancy in my bed at present and I would be happy for you to fill it for a couple of months—’

‘Well, I wouldn’t be happy to fill it!’ Elvi snarled back incredulously. ‘A vacancy? Is that how you think of sex?’

‘It is a need like hunger, an appetite that must be met,’ Xan responded levelly, his hard, dark gaze locked to hers like a laser beam that made her body as hot and perspiring as if she were under a spotlight. ‘If it makes you feel better, I wanted you the first time I saw you waiting in the foyer of my apartment block. I found out your name then and your connection to my maid. Doing anything about the attraction would’ve been inappropriate at that time—’

Elvi studied him in helpless wonderment. ‘I don’t believe this... I don’t believe any of it!’ she gasped. ‘You don’t even know me—’

Xan lounged back in his seat, damp but disciplined. ‘I don’t need to know you to want to have sex with you. I’m more about the physical than the cerebral with women,’ he admitted smoothly.

‘But you’re trying to buy me with a bribe!’ Elvi condemned furiously.

‘And if the offer suits you, I’ll drop the theft charge. That’s how negotiations work in this world, Elvi. You give, I give. It really is that basic—’

‘But it’s blackmail!’ Elvi accused heatedly, increasingly unnerved by his shattering level of inhuman self-control.

‘No, it’s not. You have a choice. Whether you choose to accept my offer or not is entirely up to you,’ Xan pointed out with precision. ‘Think it over for a week...’

‘I’m not going to think it over!’ Elvi assured him with blazing conviction. ‘It’s a filthy proposition and I’m not that sort of woman—’

‘Presumably you enjoy sex like other women,’ Xan interposed very drily. ‘If you’re afraid that I might be into something different like BDSM, you’re wrong. I’m completely normal in the sex department—’

‘I don’t care! I’m not interested in what you do in the bedroom!’ Elvi proclaimed, pacing his office carpet in a passion of disbelief at the direction their interview had gone in, her triangular face as red as a tomato. ‘I couldn’t imagine being some sort of sex slave—’

Xan laughed out loud, shocking her again, startling her as he sprang up from behind his desk and extended a business card to her. ‘The word you seek is mistress, not sex slave, which is rather melodramatic, if you don’t mind me saying so—’

‘Yes, I do mind!’ Elvi gasped, snatching the card off him and backing away at speed from his proximity, her heart beating so fast she feared it might bounce right out of her tight chest. ‘I mind every darned thing you’ve said since I arrived. I didn’t like any of it and I wouldn’t have come to this meeting if I’d known you were likely to suggest some immoral arrangement to me! Call me stupid but that idea didn’t even cross my mind!’